Tuesday, March 22, 2016

The phylogeny of elves and other fantastic figures

I have previously pointed out that phylogeny reconstructions exits for legendary figures, cartoon animals, Donald Duck, Pokémon, and dragons (see Faux phylogenies). Another popular topic has been the figures of fantastical literature such as elves, dwarves, goblins, gnomes and trolls. Here I present a few of the better-known ones from around the web.

Finally, we have the genealogy to end all fantasy genealogies. The Lord of the Rings Project has a complete interactive genealogy of all of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. It is way too large to show here, even in miniature, and is actually a series of genealogies that are not connected. However, it is worth noting that, unlike the above genealogies, while most of the genealogies are tree-like many are actually networks because both sexes are included.